Eduardo Scoz is a software architect and self-proclaimed, “analytics addict.” In early 2010, he grew frustrated with his daily routine of checking in on his web analytics from several sites and personal blogs. Very quickly he found himself spending an overwhelming amount of time monitoring his key metrics from across his own content kingdom: he yearned for a way to keep an eye on his KPI’s without having it feel like a full-time job.
Eduardo was determined to find an iPhone application that gave him a high-level view of all of his sites in way that was easy to digest. After a few days of searching he realized that the only way for him to get exactly what he wanted was to build it himself. He had never built an iPhone application but his “learn by doing” mentality prevailed: after a few weeks of prototyping, he had come up with something he was proud of. He showed it to a few friends and gauging their reaction, he realized he might be onto something. He incorporated their feedback, finished building it out and decided to release it publicly. In February 2010, Quicklytics was born.
Quicklytics allows users to rapidly check the status of multiple websites in a matter of seconds and visually understand how their site is performing for both current and historical timeframes. It has full support for both iPhone and iPad as well as custom filtering that allows for quick deep dives into areas of interest. While its primary views focus on top-level metrics, Quicklytics also provides detailed reports with most of the data also available through Google Analytics.
“All apps were about either showing as much data as possible, or focusing on less-useful stuff, like browsers and screen sizes, which are only really necessary when you’re doing deep analysis, not when ‘checking the weather’,” says Eduardo.
As soon as Quicklytics hit the App Store, it spread like wildfire. In the 2 ½ years since it was released, Quicklytics has received over 40,000 downloads - most of which were paid. This has translated into a significant source of side revenue for Eduardo’s business that has allowed him to continue building new features for Quicklytics while looking for new projects to learn from. Now, Eduardo finds great joy in using Quicklytics to measure the mobile app analytics on - you guessed it - Quicklytics.
Quicklytics leverages the Analytics Core Reporting APIs Objective-C library and OAuth 2.0 for user authentication. Although this was Eduardo’s first experience with the Analytics APIs and Objective-C, he was able to take full advantage of the Developer Forums for support: “In the few cases I found issues with the tool, Google developers were actually very helpful and fixed some issues from their side. It was a great experience.”
Armed with a clear user problem and a willingness to learn, Eduardo was able to turn one of his biggest pain points into a viable side business and a solution that is enjoyed by many. According to Eduardo, “It’s great to know that a lot of people find it as useful as I do.”
To learn more about Quicklytics, check out his App Store listing.
Posted by John Milinovich, Google Analytics API team
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